China Unicom chairman and CEO Liu Liehong highlighted the impact of its cloud business on its overall 2021 performance, as it also registered subscriber and ARPU gains.

Liu cited data projecting the value added by core industries to the digital economy will account for 10 per cent of GDP by 2025, which will aid its industry internet business.

Net profit rose 15 per cent year-on-year to CNY14.4 billion ($2.3 billion) in 2021, with revenue growing 7.9 per cent to CNY327.9 billion.

Mobile service revenue increased 4.8 per cent to CNY164.1 billion.

The industry internet business increased 18.7 per cent to 54.8 billion, accounting for 18.5 per cent of overall service revenue. Growth was driven in large part by a 46.3 per cent rise in cloud platform sales to CNY16.3 billion.

China Unicom ended the year with 154.9 million 5G package subscribers, up from 78 million at end-January 2021, the first month it reported figures. It’s total customer base increased 11.3 million to 317.1 million compared with a 12.7 million decline in 2020.

ARPU grew 4.3 per cent to CNY43.90.

Mobile data traffic grew 32.2 per cent, with the monthly average usage per subscriber increasing 30.9 per cent to 12.7GB.

Capex rose from CNY67.6 billion to CNY69 billion, with half of the investment earmarked for mobile networks. Together with China Telecom it added 310 million 5G base stations for a total of 690 million.